Like other resurrected before her, Yulia Skripal has a wound by which doubters should believe

Yulia Skripal looked like she was reading the Russian news when she repeated, word for word, a statement that had obviously been prepared especially for the occasion – something that is otherwise known as a script. As the reader will probably well know by now, a film, of what is misleadingly being called an interview, emerged yesterday via Reuters: Yulia in a wooded area, the constant throbbing of airplane engines being heard in the audio background – suggesting London, where she was said to have been located. Two pages of handwritten text, supposedly composed by Yulia herself, was also published by the news agency on its website. One is in Russian, the other is the English translation. The English one looks to be perfect – Yulia, if she handwrote it, obviously carefully copied it out from a neat version written by an English speaker.

This threw up the first area for suspicion: was the text originally English, or was it Russian? The answer, some feel, might shine some light on whether or not Skripal is acting under duress. At FBEL, it was concluded that she was complicit in the hoax (find a list of previous articles here) – but that doesn’t rule out the possibility of her having discovered what she has got herself into in the process, and consequently wanting out.

Fascinatingly, the Russians at the UK Embassy seem to think that Yulia’s text in her native language showed signs of having been translated into Russian. No multilinguist the author be, but he knows enough to know that sometimes certain expressions that are so natural in one tongue will look clumsy in another. Maybe this is what the Russians are alluding to.

Obviously, Yulia was reading a pre-written text. More than that, judging by quite a few elements, the text was a translation from English and had been initially written by a native English-speaker. The handwritten letters signed by Yulia in Russian and English confirm this impression.

As far as the FBEL appraisal on this issue goes, Yulia did not appear to be under duress while she gave her statement. There is no doubt that she was speaking from a script – one that she’d evidently learnt by heart – and delivered it without much, if any, verbal stumbling. If she is as good an actor as all that, then she could pull off “fear in the eyes”, so her body language is not a trustworthy medium by which to jump to any conclusions.

Instead, let’s look at the concrete material available to us. Yulia Skripal’s written statement begins, just like the spoken version, with the greeting “Good afternoon”.  This tells us that it was written in preparation for the speaking event, because a writer can’t know when he is going to be read, and thus when someone is going to receive the greeting. On the other hand, a script-writer has an idea of when a speaking engagement is to take place, and composes his work to appear contemporaneous with the future.

There is no way of denying it, the method by which Skripal has made her first public appearance since she was “poisoned” does suggest a good deal of control – wielded by the “British State”, which the corporate media readily admits has her in protective custody. But that doesn’t mean that Skripal isn’t complicit. It’s quite simple: being in cahoots would mean her not wanting to risk exposure either, and not doing anything to do so.

There is a danger to assume, because the video and written versions of the statement were released on 23rd May, that it signifies that the material was created recently as well. In actual fact, the age of the material is an unknown quantity, because the written statement by Yulia, as some of us might have expected of it, is not dated.

In her statement, Yulia Skripal claims that she has been discharged from hospital, and was informed during her stay that she had been poisoned by a “nerve agent”. At FBEL, because there is still no evidence of her being in Salisbury on 4th March, we don’t believe she ever stepped foot in to a medical facility, and thus, by putting her face and name to the falsehood, demonstrates participation in the deception. However, if we choose momentarily to believe everything she says as gospel truth, then there is a detail in the Russian version of her statement that tells us when it was written. The drama occurs all in one innocuous looking short line – as the English words appear at least:

I take one day at a time and want to help care for my dad till his full recovery.

The surprising thing about the Russian version of the text is that its writer has struck through some words in the above sentence, without obliterating them so that they could still be read, and then squeezed in alternative remarks after the document had been completed. There is no doubt that Yulia, if she was the writer, did not alter the text as she was composing. When you do that, the alterations appear in the same lines after that which is crossed-out. Instead, the additional material appears in gaps created by the original sentence structure.

The author is given to understand that the original line in Russian talks about Sergei Skripal’s “discharge from hospital”, with Yulia’s help to be administered after this event.

…want to help my father after his discharge from hospital

…хочу помочь моему отцу после его выписки из больницы (from Google).

Hand written Russian looks very different to printed, but English speakers should be able to see the words in Skripal’s cursive. The second word in the first alteration is a variation of “help” to do with its continuation into the future, rather than a one-off piece of assistance. The key word to look out for in the second alteration is “Восстановление” which means “recovery” (Google), so that the alteration reads as follows: “…intend to continue to help my father until his full recovery”.

The significance becomes clear in the comparison between what was struck out, and what was added. The first implies desire to fulfil a requirement in times to come. The second suggests that this is already going on, and will continue. The explanation for the difference appears to be this: at the time of writing, Skripal had not yet been released from hospital. If you want to take Yulia Skripal for her word, it is possible to infer that she wrote her text before the 18th May, which is when Sergei Skripal was discharged.

However, the author suspects that we see yet another case of someone, somewhere, failing to get their facts in order – which is a tell-tale characteristic of a hoax, and something that one sees time and again when observing these things. If there is no reality to a web of deception, there is nothing to hang a fact on. In the end, and in the English, there was to be no suggestion of where on a timeline the text had been written. Somebody made an editorial decision about what got put in the English version – rather like the use of the informal “dad” rather than “father”, which presumably was designed to make the relationship between Yulia and Sergei appear closer in English than she apparently supposes it – at least as it should appear in public, perhaps.

Of course, the question is begged, if everything is so highly controlled, why would the British State release Yulia Skripal’s corrected text? Because she wouldn’t make another copy? Because the propaganda is aimed primarily at the blue-rinsed BBC audience whose only knowledge of anything Russian is that St Petersburg was on the route of that cruise they once had? In short – no one is paying attention. The highly stupid British can’t even look at damning evidence in pictures, let alone in written English, let alone in Russian.

But talking of evidence in pictures – there was one aspect of the appearance of Yulia Skripal that suggested that she had been ill, and that was the mark on her throat. Talk soon appeared on the internet about a tracheostomy, but the geopolitical analyst and media figure, Charles Shoebridge, noticed that Reuters had removed earlier mention of a wound from its coverage. The sitiuation suggested that there might have been a reluctance to talk about the mark in corporate-media (and also some places in alternative media where one might have expected to see it).  It suggests that Yulia’s medical treatment is not to be talked about (presumably there is a fear that it would get debunked). And if true, it would mean that the matter was being left open for the public to decide for itself how Yulia Skripal had had certain treatment. What becomes interesting at that point, then, is how has the corporate-media managed to introduce into the public consciousness any information that it would have people appreciate as conformation of their suspicions.

If you expect it, you look out for it: and the source was duly discovered. On the night of 23rd May, the corporate-media that returned results with a search for “Skripal” and “tracheostomy”, was the Sun, the Mirror and the Daily Mail, and the first two were quoting information that first appeared in the latter. “Will Stewart in Moscow” reported on the Skripal family’s reaction to the Yulia’s video:

Yulia Skripal’s family welcomes her video appearance as proof she is “alive” – by Will Stewart in Moscow

Yulia Skripal’s family tonight welcomed her video appearance as proof she is ‘alive’.

Her cousin Viktoria, 45, who has been twice refused entry to Britain to meet Yulia, 33, and her father Sergei, 66, said: ‘The whole family was incredibly happy to see the video as it least it confirms that she is alive.

‘This alone is such a joy.’

The family had expressed fears – because she had not been seen since early March – that she and her father were dead.

‘The main message for us was that she did say she wanted to be back home, back to Russia,’ said Viktoria.

‘I’m having so many calls from all over the world that I didn’t even have time to watch it properly and discuss the video from the family until you sent me the file I saw Yulia.

‘Judging by what I saw, it looks like she tracheostomy, you can see a scar on her neck’.

When one tries to find more about and by “Will Stewart in Moscow”, the internet generally draws a blank. Whether or not the fellow exists, and whether or not Viktoria ever uttered the word “tracheostomy”, either in Russian or in English, anywhere near any kind of media person (it’s doubtful†), it is clear that this Mail piece was intended to be the source of the confirmation. If the reader doesn’t know by now, it is high time he learned: the corporate-media isn’t there to inform, but to manipulate, and this piece was part of an operation on public perception (and don’t fall for any “D-Notice” disinfo – the Government doesn’t need D-Notices when the corporate and alternative media is just a branch of British Intelligence). The corporate-media has since piled in with re-affirmation of the confirmation, albeit in a sly way, of the public suspicion, with the Telegraph writing “a scar on her throat, presumably caused by a tracheotomy to help her breathe following the attack”, and the BBC writing of “a scar on Ms Skripal’s neck can be seen which is understood to be from a tracheotomy – a procedure to help patients breathe”.

As for whether or not the wound we appear to see is real, like Thomas, we must demand to put our fingers in the hole before we can believe in the resurrection – and that isn’t going to happen. For make-up artists who can produce gruesome special effects, one doesn’t even have to go as far as Hollywood. The real issue about the wound is the very fact that it was presented. Skripal wore a top that appeared specifically designed to highlight the fact that she might have once had a hole in her throat. Normally, people like to cover that sort of thing up, don’t they? And with Skripal, it would have been so easy to do.

However, with Skripal offering no new information about what happened to her, the point of her appearance seems to have been to have everyone look at her neck wound so that they could all agree that she had once been very poorly. At the top of this article we said that she had spoken from a script as an actor would. Throw in the deliberate presentation of the wound, and what you get is actual fully fledged theatre.

† There is a sense that Viktoria is reacting to prompting: “until you sent me the file”. There is no attribution to any Russian media that Viktoria might have appeared on to make remarks, so we are supposed to believe that this is direct interaction with a Daily Mail reporter. Look at it this way: what would she be able to do about it if the Daily Mail invented material to claim her as the source? Having said that, Viktoria should not be beyond suspicion of being an accomplice in the affair. It starts with the fact that she was able to record a telephone conversation with Yulia that could not have happened without the permission of the latter’s custodians. It was an event that the British needed to happen to take the heat off their violation of the consular treaty. The best bet is British corporate-media mischief.